


Living Faith

by lettersbyelise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bars and Pubs, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Developing Friendships, Gift Fic, H/D Owlpost Holiday Fest, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, Pre-Slash, References to Depression, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-08-24 02:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16631510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersbyelise/pseuds/lettersbyelise
Summary: Draco Malfoy has shut himself away and is getting ready to face his first Christmas since the war. Luckily, there is nothing like a chance encounter with his former nemesis, Harry Potter, to reawaken his faith in life.





	Living Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [germankitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/germankitty/gifts).



> Dear [germankitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/germankitty/pseuds/germankitty/works),  
> To create your gift, I used a combination of two of your prompts: _two lonely men in a city blanketed by snow,_ and _Christmas traditions (old ones or some they create together)_. I'm afraid the plot is minimal, but I still hope you enjoy the Drarry Christmas spirit of this little fic!  
> Happy holidays <3
> 
> Many thanks to the lovely Erin_Riwen for the swift beta!

There’d been a snowfall again today. Draco had watched the interminable dance of snowflakes from the comfort of his window seat—the only one in his small flat, the one with a view of the quiet street outside. It was Sunday, and Draco had nowhere to be; not that he ever had anywhere to be, these days.  So he’d made himself a cup of tea, wrapped himself in a comforter, and sat to watch the snow fall.

 _The coldest day in twenty years,_ the drone of the news commenter informed him, reaching him through the scratchy buzz of the wireless. He wouldn’t know. He hadn’t _lived_ twenty years yet.

****

“Draco? Darling, are you there?”

His mother’s voice pulled him out of the trance-like reverie he had sunk into.  He stood. _Firecall._  He walked to the fireplace. There she was, her beautiful head held high as if she was having tea at the Savoy, not sticking out of the embers in Draco’s hearth.

“Hello, Mother,” he told her.

Her thin lips were still pressed tightly together, but the corners turned up in a small smile when she saw him.

“Hello, darling. I thought you’d gone out.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “In this storm?”

“You might have. You’ve had—” she stopped, hesitating on the next words, “—quite uncharacteristic behaviour lately.”

Draco repressed a sigh. He did not want to have this conversation again.

“Mother. I am home. I intend to stay home for the foreseeable future if this is what worries you.”

“This _is_ what worries me, Draco,” she said. There was a line forming between her pale eyebrows. She must be more concerned than she let on. “You never leave your flat anymore. It’s not… normal, you know that. You’re young and—”

Yes, he was young. By which she meant, he was lucky to be alive.  He felt his brow furrow.

“Mother, we’ve talked about this before. I do leave the flat. I do the shopping. I—I’m coming to see you on Christmas. You know I am.”

She scrutinized him with those blue eyes of hers, the ones he could never keep a secret from.

“Don’t be coy, Draco. It doesn’t suit you.”

He felt himself blush. Suddenly, he was dying to go back to his window seat, to watch the quiet snowstorm wrap the city in its silence.

He wanted silence.

“Fine, Mother,” he said. He saw her pull back slightly, sensing his dismissal. She was always so perceptive. He felt the urge to be just a little mean to her—to be the rebellious teenager he’d never allowed himself to be. “I will go out of the flat. Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve been out in the snow. Remember how much I liked it when it snowed at the Manor—”

“Draco—”

“So a walk in the snow seems like the perfect outing, do you not agree?”

“Draco, if only you let your friends visit you—”

“I shall dress warmly and build a snowman in the park, perhaps.”

“—Pansy or Blaise, or even the Goyle boy, he’s asked after you again—”

Draco dropped his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath. He tried to remember that his mother was just as alone, just as lonely as he was. That she only nagged him out of concern. That perhaps she was right.

It didn’t mean he had to like being told off as if he were twelve years old again.

“Mother, that’s enough,” he cut her off. She fell quiet, her mouth pressed firmly shut. He sighed. “I promise you I’ll do my best.”

“Do you promise you’ll make time for your friends?” she asked carefully.

 _I’m not even sure I can still call them that,_ he thought. He didn’t tell her that.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Once a week. Please.”

“Fine. Once a week, I shall see one of my Hogwarts friends.”

Her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally and she nodded.

“Thank you, Draco. I shall see you at Christmas.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. Oddly, he was. He dreaded returning to the Manor, and besides, his mother was not an easy person to be around; yet she was still his mother, and he missed her.

He’d accepted, long ago, that they would never understand each other. He’d accepted that coexistence with his mother was the best they could ever do. She would never comprehend what he was going through.

Frankly, he wasn’t sure he understood it, either.

****

Dusk settled over London, but the snowstorm didn't relent. Draco burrowed further into the comforter and lay his forehead on the cold glass of the window. His breath fogged it slightly, blurring the slow, continuous fall of snowflakes. He was at his third cup of tea, which meant he would not be able to sleep tonight. At least tonight, he would be able to blame his insomnia on the excess of caffeine. He wished he could replace the beverage warming his hands with something stronger—but drinking alcohol alone was out of the question. He knew himself well enough to not go down that road. If he’d had company, however…

He froze when he saw the silhouette crossing the street, a few yards to the left of his building.

The man was about his height, perhaps a bit shorter—it was hard to tell with his broad shoulders hunched against the snowfall. Draco might have eyed him curiously and gone back to his daydream without a second thought, if something in the stranger’s gait hadn’t woken an old instinct in him.

He rubbed the window clear of the foggy patches his breath had left and squinted.

A veritable bird’s nest of a mop of black hair, peppered with fat snowflakes. The round frames of his spectacles. The flash of emerald green eyes when the man looked up for a second before crossing the street.

Draco’s breath caught in his throat.

Harry Potter.

Harry _sodding_ Potter, crossing Draco’s street, looking every bit like he belonged in this neighbourhood, like it was normal for him to take a stroll in the storm when all the city had shut down in anticipation of the snowy night.

Draco stood abruptly. Unthinking, he ran to the foyer, slid his boots on while grabbing his coat from the peg, opened the door and rushed down the stairs.

_Please let him still be there when I come down._

He slammed the entrance door open and stumbled out in the street, feet sinking in the freshly-fallen snow. He realised he was breathless.

The man lifted his eyes to him.

 _Definitely_ Harry Potter.

A snowy mirage. A near-Christmas miracle.

Potter stopped walking and stood motionless, staring at Draco. His mouth had fallen open a little, snow accumulating in his messy hair and on his shoulders, and Draco took comfort in it. For all the ludicrousness of the situation, neither of them seemed to have expected to come nose to nose with the other on a random Sunday evening in December. If anything, that fact alone was reassuring. The natural order of things was preserved. It was just that, by a twist of fate Draco couldn’t fathom, Harry Potter had indeed appeared in front of his building at a moment Draco happened to be watching.

Potter blinked. He lifted a gloved hand, breaking the stillness of the scene.

“Er—hi. Malfoy.”

Draco gave him a little wave in response. “Hi.”

Potter looked around, his eyebrows slightly raised, as though trying to make sense of this meeting. “How come—Do you live here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay. I didn’t know.”

“No. How could you?”

Potter shrugged. “Right.”

Draco crossed his arms, pressed his cold hands under his arms. He could feel the snowflakes landing in his hair, every single one of them determined, it seemed, to jointly freeze him alive and soak him wet. He cursed his uncharacteristic bout of spontaneity: the clever move would have been to wear a hat and a scarf before walking out in the blizzard. Well, actually—the clever move would have been to do nothing at all, pretend it wasn’t Harry Potter wandering around Draco’s neighbourhood, and continue his evening as planned.

The silence weighed on them, heavier than the blanket of snow. Draco spoke before he could stop himself.

“What are you—what brings you here?”

“Here?”

“Yes. In this neighbourhood. In _my_ neighbourhood.”

“It’s Dean and Seamus’s neighbourhood, too.”

“Who?”

“Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan? They were in our year at Hogwarts?”

“Ah. Gryffindors?”

“Yeah. We were roommates.”

“Apologies for not knowing this detail about your life.”

Potter’s face shut off at that. Funny. A few years ago, Draco would have loved to elicit this kind of reaction from him.

Now he just felt… regret. And the urgent need to backtrack.

“I mean… I didn’t know a lot about you. So, yes. This was news to me. This, and the fact that two former Hogwarts classmates live near me, in Muggle Shoreditch.”

Potter relaxed a bit. The corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “So is the fact that Draco Malfoy lives in Muggle Shoreditch, between you and me.” He slowly turned on the spot, carving a small circle in the snow. “It’s a nice neighbourhood.”

Draco shoved his hands more tightly under his arms. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Potter turned to look at him. “How long have you lived here?”

“The past six months.”

It took less than a second for Potter to do the math. _Since the trials. Since the war._

Whatever he was about to say died in his throat. Just like that, they were back at staring at one another in silence.

“Dean and Seamus are having a party tonight,” Potter muttered at last. He seemed to think about it, then added: “More of a gathering, I suppose. No one is in the mood for parties, I think.”

“What time does it start?” Draco asked. He deliberately didn’t want to pick on the “no mood for parties” part.

Harry pulled his coat sleeve up and checked his wristwatch. “Six o’clock.”

“It’s only half past four.”

“Yeah. Well,” Potter blushed. “I felt like talking a walk.”

Draco watched him for a moment. Like him, Potter was dressed in Muggle clothes. Perhaps he’d never fallen out of the habit. He wore his navy blue peacoat, relaxed jeans and white trainers with natural ease; his soft grey scarf was tied around his neck carelessly, as though he’d almost forgotten to put it on and had been reminded of it by the cold air nipping at his throat after stepping out of his front door. When Draco wore Muggle clothes, he looked like every detail of his outfit had been selected after painstakingly careful thought. Potter’s face, though, was nothing as blithe as his clothes. He looked pale, his features drawn, his green eyes circled with purple smudges behind his round spectacles.

Something was worming its way into Draco’s heart.

Empathy. Compassion. Kinship.

Before he had time to stop and think, he said: “You have time until six. Fancy a drink?”

Potter’s face lit up.

****

The pub was decked with Christmas decorations: red and gold tinsel glittering along the side of the bar, lit-up plastic snowmen, Father Christmases and reindeer standing among the bottles, and a splendidly tall Christmas tree in a corner, almost bowing under the weight of baubles and twinkling fairy lights. The place wasn’t crowded so much as to make Draco and Potter feel unwelcome. It was just lively enough for the dismal grip on Draco’s evening to lift momentarily, small groups of Muggle white-collar Londoners sharing pints after work, a few tourists peering over city guides, friends in pairs leaning into one another to better listen to the conversations. Draco wondered which one of these pub goers him and Potter looked like.

Potter slid into a booth after gesturing at the barmaid to bring them two pints.

“How do you know I want a beer?” Draco asked with a lifted eyebrow.

“It’s a Muggle neighbourhood pub, Malfoy. Beer is likely the best thing there is to drink.”

“Fair enough,” Draco sighed. He couldn’t help his smile, no matter how much he wanted to. It was just—odd, really. Sitting here with Harry Potter. Ordering pints. Looking for something to say.

The barmaid brought them tall glasses filled with golden liquid and topped with white foam. The beer sloshed when she placed them on the coasters, rivulets of it running down the misty glass. Draco looked up at Potter. _Harry._ He looked better in the warm glow of the pub’s light, his eyes greener, brighter.

“Hey,” he simply said, as though Draco had just walked in, joining him for a meeting they’d have planned in advance.

“Hi,” Draco smiled back.

“How have you been?”

“You’re asking big questions, Potter,” Draco laughed.

Harry chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah. Well. I haven’t seen you since the summer. It’s a good enough question.”

“You never cared about how I was.”

“Did you want me to?”

“No,” Draco said defensively. “Whatever.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me.” Harry still had that little smile playing on his lips. “I’ve been okay,” he said, as if answering the question Draco should have politely returned. “As okay as I can be, I think. Looking for a place to stay. Seeing my friends. Trying to figure out what I want to do.”

“Didn’t you want to be an Auror?” Draco asked before he could stop himself. Clearly, he knew too much about Potter’s old career aspirations.

Harry didn’t seem to mind. “Yes. I might still want to be. I just… I just never had time to decide.”

“It doesn’t take long to decide if you’re sure.”

“Maybe. I want to explore my options, though. I said ‘Auror’ because it was the only thing I knew, back then. Being an Auror isn’t a bad choice, but for me... it’s like being five and wanting to be a fireman.”

“What’s a fireman?”

“It’s—Merlin, Malfoy.” Harry laughed. “You live in a Muggle building in a Muggle neighbourhood. You should educate yourself about their habits and customs.”

Draco felt his cheeks heat. Harry seemed to take pity on him. “A fireman’s job is to put out fires. Before you say anything—no, there’s no equivalent in the wizarding world. Muggles don’t have magic wands and they don’t know Aguamenti.” He took a sip of his beer. “What about you? You still haven’t answered my question.”

Draco took a breath. “I am rather ashamed to say I haven’t even done as much as you have, Potter.”

“I haven’t done much.”

“Exactly.”

They lapsed into silence. Draco drank from his pint. The beer was good, refreshing, hitting the back of his mouth with a light pang of bitterness. Somewhere in the pub, someone laughed loudly and their friends cheered. It was nice, grudgingly heartwarming. He should come here more often, he thought.

“My mother is worried about me,” Draco confessed. He traced circles on his pint, not meeting Harry’s gaze. “She says I should see more people.”

“You don’t?” Harry asked. His voice was soft. Part of Draco’s old self hated Harry for his gentleness. But his old self was a distant memory now, the immature, petty kid who Harry could have left to burn and die, and instead had chosen to save.

“No,” he admitted. “I like to be alone,” he added in lieu of an explanation.

“Nobody likes to be alone. Not all the time, anyway.”

They gazed at each other for a moment. The eye contact felt strangely intimate, just this side of bearable, as though Harry could cast a Legilimens on Draco just by looking into his eyes.

“I needed time to collect my thoughts, I think,” Draco said quietly.

Harry nodded. “They don’t seem to let us do that, do they?”

“It’s maddening,” Draco said. The words poured out of him. “We’ve all been through the same war, and yet our experiences of it have nothing to do with those of our friends, of the people we know. Talking about it is inextricable. It won’t solve anything, it won’t erase that it happened. It won’t make me choose the good side in time to actually make a difference. It only makes me dwell on it, over and over. When I’m alone, I can let my mind go to a place where nothing happened, nothing is happening, nothing will happen. It sounds depressing but it keeps me sane.”

“It won’t make you choose the good side.”

Draco looked up. Harry was watching him intently.

“That’s what I said, yes.”

“You didn't say the ‘right’ side or the ‘winning’ side.”

“Was it what you expected me to say?”

“I didn’t expect you to say anything, but… yeah, maybe.”

“Potter,” Draco eyed him exasperatedly. “You know I covered for you that day at the Manor. Did you think I did it for your pretty eyes?” He does have pretty eyes, his brain whispered treacherously. Draco shook his head. “V—Voldemort had to lose. I wanted him gone. I wanted them all dead. I wish I could say it was survival instinct that made me do it. If only it was.” His body still bore the scars of Voldemort’s fury, days and days of torture just light enough to keep functioning, present enough to never be free of the pain.

His body also bore the scars the Harry had given him, but he had come to feel a strange kind of love for his pale, ropey, frighteningly disgraceful Sectumsempra scars. The slash of the spell cutting him open had pulled Draco out of the terrified loop he’d been stuck into. Lying in a pool of his own blood, Harry’s desperate hands on him, his tears falling on his wounds like a phoenix lament, Draco had had a moment of clarity that had never left him. He’d finished his mission, repaired the Vanishing Cabinet, and never looked back at his old self, his old beliefs. If even Harry had been willing to kill him, then it truly was war, and Draco had picked a side.

The good side.

The pub was warm, full of friendly chatter. The same group that laughed earlier was now singing Christmas carols in a drunken canon. _We wish you a merry Christmas, We wish you a merry Christmas, And a happy New Year._ Across from him, in the booth, Harry was studying him with a melancholy look on his face. Their pints were empty.

“I never really liked Christmas,” he told Draco, “until I was eleven.”

“I used to love Christmas, until a few years ago.”

Harry laughed. There was just the slightest undercurrent of bitterness in it, and it hit Draco like a spell: how much he wanted the bitterness gone, from his life and from Harry’s. They deserved better. They deserved to live.

“I wish Christmas could still feel the way it did when we were eleven,” Harry smiled, a sad twist of his mouth.

“See, Potter, this isn’t going to work. We’re not eleven anymore. What you need to do is change your perspective.”

Harry looked at him quizzically, and Draco’s heart swelled. Not for the first time this evening, he thought about how strange it was, being here with Harry Potter. He thought about the fact that he had willingly exchanged more words with him than he’d had in a month. He thought about how Harry, against all odds, had made him smile, had opened him up, just by wandering aimlessly in Draco’s street.

Draco realised with a pang that he didn’t want Harry to leave.

Leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he grinned conspiratorially. “It’s a matter of changing your perspective,” he repeated. “And to change your perspective, you need to let go of the old Christmas traditions and make new ones.”

Across the table, Harry leaned in as well, bringing his face closer to Draco’s. He smiled, a flash of teeth on which Draco’s gaze fell and lingered. “And what would these traditions be?”

“What do you say we start with the one we’ve just established?”

“A pint at the pub?”

Draco nodded, his face calm and collected, his heart hammering frantically in his chest. “A pint at the pub, each week until Christmas.”

Slowly, Harry’s smile widened. “How about we make it twice a week each week, Draco?”

Before leaving, Harry agreed to meet Draco at the same pub in three days and shook his hand. Draco stood in front of the pub’s window twinkling with golden fairy lights and watched Harry walk away, leaving footsteps in the snow.

He smiled.

 _“Once a week, I shall see one of my Hogwarts friends,”_ he’d told his mother.

There was finally a Christmas promise he would be more than happy to keep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are lovely!
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lettersbyelise)!


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